Welcome Home Dad! Revised
by Lady Thesta
Summary: It's new, shiny, and improved! Kagome is looking for her Dad in the Feudal Era. Her family is of the Eastern Lands and Sesshomaru is greatly intrigued. Sess/Kag Rating may go up as chapters progress, but I will give warning ahead of time. Enjoy!


**Welcome Home Dad!**

Thesta: It's been around six years since I started this fic and around five since I last updated it. Since last was heard, I've graduated high school and will be going into my fourth year of college so…I've grown a lot as an artist and a writer. I feel that this story, which I dearly love, just isn't fitting to be read anymore. So I've gone back, re-written and fixed a LOT of problems. I've re-worked how things are going to go, took out a lot of pointless filler and have placed an end goal in sight.

With the re-write, chapters have been lengthened and thus, I am hoping to have this story wrapped up and finished somewhere between 15-20 chapters. And my goal is to make this fic a great read and something worth the wait.

I would like to thank everyone who has reviewed over the years. It's for you that I give you the new, and I hope vastly improved, Welcome Home Dad! Please to be enjoying!

Disclaimer: InuYasha and the respective characters there in are copyright to Rumiko Takahashi. This fiction is purely fan made and I receive no profit what-so-ever from said fiction. The idea behind the story that I have placed Rumiko Takahashi's characters in came from my own musings. Thank you.

**Chapter 1: Of Dreams Turned Nightmares**

Running around the darkened, fog shrouded family shrine, a five-year-old cried out for her father. "Daddy!" she called frantically, as tears streamed down her face. She was so scared! She just wanted her Daddy to come and chase the fog away! To make her world warm and bright again, like it's supposed to be.

As she searched, she somehow found her way up high into the branches of the Goshinboku. Clutching at the branches, she wedged herself as far back against the trunk as she could get. The ground was an awfully long way down, and she was an awfully little girl. "Daddy! Please help me!"

Hearing footsteps approaching, she peered into the fog. Hopefully that her savior would be the beloved form of her father, fearing that it would turn out to be some terrible monster that fed on scared, little girls.

To her joy, her father did emerge from the fog. But before she had a chance to call out to him to help her down, three more men that she didn't know joined him at the base of the tree. There was something about those men that sent chills down her young spine, and she pressed herself even more firmly against the trunk of the tree. Praying that the men wouldn't notice her, her father would make them go away, then he could get her down and they could go inside where it was safe.

Watching helplessly, she saw the three men surround her father and it seemed as if a terrible monster leapt out of them, formed from the surrounding fog. All at once, the three monsters came crashing down on her motionless father. And, with a voice gone shrill from fear, desperation, helplessness and despair, she screamed. This was how Kagome Higurashi awoke, along with her companions, for the day, by that terrible scream from the young woman's lips.

Bolting upright from her sleeping bag, she desperately tried to stifle her screams with her hands. Dripping with sweat and shaking, the girl from the future tried to calm herself, telling herself repeatedly it was just a dream. Just a dream.

"Kagome?" asked Sango gently as she came to kneel at the other girl's side. Reaching out, she pulled her hands away from her mouth before wrapping her arms around her shaking shoulders. "Easy, you're safe now. It was just a dream. You're safe."

Shuddering violently, she leaned against the older girl. Seeking comfort from her dear friend as the rest of their tiny group gazed on. Miroku, who normally would of taken advantage of the situation to grope both girls at once, had opted to do no more than mover closer. Giving her the comfort of his company without invading her space, waiting patiently for her to decide to she ready to talk and share her fears.

Jumping down from the tree he'd been perched on, InuYasha kept his ears canted back as he sat next to Kagome. "Stop freak'n over a damn dream Kagome. Jeez, ya probably alerted half the demons in this forest to our presence already."

"Shut up InuYasha!" cried Shippo, leaping to the girls defense before she even had a chance to speak. Of course, the half demon didn't take kindly too and promptly thumped the small kitsune on the head. "Ow! You're so mean InuYasha!"

Getting her shaking under control, the girl from the future slowly pulled away from the comforting arms of Sango to glare at the half-breed. "Sit boy."

Firmly planted into the ground, he growled profanities and demanded, "What was that for?" But he had no choice but to wait out the spell, all the while grumbling and complaining about stupid kitsunes, stupid humans, and their stupid sensitivities.

"Lady Kagome? What sort of dream could possibly trouble you so?" questioned Miroku gently. Slowly inching his way closer to the two woman.

Sighing, the blue eyed girl whipped at her face and ran her fingers through her hair as she tried to collect her thoughts. Usually, her dreams were such a blur to her that she rarely remembered them. But this dream, this dream was always the exception. "I was just shy of six-years-old I guess, when all this started. This nightmare that I keep getting over and over and over again, in a way, I guess you could say that it haunts me."

Chewing her lip, her mind worked to piece together what she was going to say and how she was going to say it, while her eyes watched the faces of her closest friends and companions. Miroku, was still slowly inching forward and she could easily predict that a red, painful hand slap would decorate his cheek once more as his hand wandered on Sango. She watched as InuYasha got himself back up to a sitting position, Tetsuaiga held firmly in his hands as he pretended not to care about what she was trying to say. Shippo and Kirara curled up together, hanging on her every word.

These were the people that she traveled with, shared meals with. These were the people that saved her ass on a regular basis, and occasionally she was able to return the favor. These people, they were her family in this foreign time and she felt she could trust them with her secret. Her family back home would understand.

"Before my sixth birthday, three men came to visit our family shrine. They spoke with my parents saying that their employer wanted to see me. That he thought there was something special about me and that my parents should send me too him, as a peace offering of sorts. Of course my parents wanted nothing to do with it and my Dad left to personally see them off our property."

Pausing, she whipped at her eyes again. That was the easy part of the story. Now came the part that she was certain they wouldn't believe. And even if they did, they wouldn't forgive her for keeping it a secret for all these years of traveling together. But it was to late to turn back now.

"The men worked for a big wig called Onigumo, I'm assuming that's our Naraku actually. Took awhile for me to verify this though, Mom really doesn't like to talk about it and Grandpa is just crazy. Anyways, the men were demons of some sort and got in a fight with my Dad. Dad, being the amazing man that he was, was easily able to fight them off. He was so strong, whenever he was around I felt like nothing could touch me. But, they won I think…"

With a snort, InuYasha interrupted, "Of course yer old man lost! One measly human from your time against three demons? Not a chance!"

Blinking at her friend, Kagome shook her head in slight confusion. "I never said my Dad was a human. He's a demon, just like my Mom. He's just vanished, without a trace. I'm sure he's alive somewhere, it's the 'where' part that has me stumped."

Her group was silent. She kept her head down, bangs hiding her eyes from view as she waited for the worst. They would hate her; they would want her to leave and never want to see her again. She could feel fresh tears welling in her eyes and she concentrated on keeping them back. Hoping this would at least be quick.

Sango, the demon slayer, was the first to speak up after this revelation into the future girl's life. The girl who had become so much like a sister to her in these past several years, she wasn't sure what to think. But she knew, deep in her heart, that she could never stop loving her just because she'd hidden that she was a demon for so long.

Reaching up, she wrapped her arms around the girls shoulders once more and pulled her into a tight embrace.

"Oh Kagome," she murmured, unable to say anything more as she thought about her loosing her father at such a young age. It reminded her of her own brother, Kohaku, and brought a lump of guilt and pain to her throat.

When Sango couldn't finish, and rather than let InuYasha pipe up and make matters worse in someway, Miroku decided to say what they all felt anyways. "Lady Kagome, this changes nothing. Accept, perhaps, that now we will be assisting you in searching for your father when we can. Do you have any ideas as to where he may be?"

Turning her head where she rested in Sango's embrace, she nodded slightly. "He's somewhere here in the Feudal Era…"


End file.
